To mark the opening of the new Scottish parliament yesterday, an illustrious line-up of the country’s artistes joined a boycott of the official celebrations. From the poet laureate Edwin Morgan to the authors Alasdair Gray, Iain Banks, James Kelman and Irvine Welsh, and the actors Peter Mullan and Bill Paterson, they declared themselves for the republican cause and cocked a snook at the great devolution experiment.

As processions of provosts and politicians attended Queen and courtiers and puffed out their chests with pride, many of those who would be traditionally expected to record such a splendid occasion — in verse, in song, on the stage — were not there (though Morgan did send a poem in his place).

While it may not be that unusual for creative types to align themselves with left of centre politics, it was all going to be so different in Scotland at the onset of devolution. Back then, the artistic community expected that the inauguration of a Scottish parliament would bring much needed investment to their organisations. After the cutbacks of the 1990s, they believed that having their very own ministers would improve their prospects.

They looked forward to the dawn of a new era, in which government would embrace the nation’s cultural heritage, art would be valued and artists championed.

No wonder they are disillusioned now.

It is nearly a year since Jack McConnell gave his St Andrew’s Day speech, with its highfalutin talk of “arts for all”, and his vision of making the arts central to urban regeneration, social inclusion, tourism, education and health.

Many in the cultural sector held their breath, sceptical after four years of cultural reviews, four arts ministers, and drastic under-funding, that a Labour administration would ever take the arts seriously. They gave McConnell cautious backing but within weeks that support had began to unravel.

Today, we have a government that spends 0.5% of its total budget on the arts, and most of that through local authorities. Spending on the arts was higher in 1996, before devolution. We have a once mighty opera company preparing for a “dark” period, its resources exhausted, its fine chorus sacked, and its music director, Sir Richard Armstrong, lamenting “the most terrible bruising time”.

A company that staged 11 operas a year 20 years ago is reduced to four full-scale productions this year and none next season. It is reported to be seeking a lifeline from England so it can continue performing.

We have an executive “more interested in football than they are in culture” to quote Dame Anne Evans, the acclaimed soprano, who came out of retirement to raise money for Scottish Opera. And we have an arts council whose basic grant is currently at a standstill and will only increase by 1.5% over the next two years.

Meanwhile, we have lost yet another arts minister, gained a new one, and still there is no sign of a coherent arts policy.

In a country that boasts one of the world’s most prestigious arts festivals, the government is regarded by alienated arts leaders as ignorant, its attitude towards them “vicious”, its tactics a “jackboot in the face of Scottish culture”.

For much of this vandalism we can thank Frank McAveety, the former Glasgow councillor who may have felt he was merely passing the baton in the relay that is the arts portfolio. As one of his predecessors, Sam Galbraith, said, the job is “an afterthought given to the most compliant minister who is not expected to do very much and, at best, keep the complaints to a minimum”.

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